The words [Equity-language] guides recommend or reject are sometimes exactly the same, justified in nearly identical language.
…
Although the guides refer to language “evolving,” these changes are a revolution from above. They haven’t emerged organically from the shifting linguistic habits of large numbers of people.
…
Prison does not become a less brutal place by calling someone locked up in one a person experiencing the criminal-justice system.
…
The whole tendency of equity language is to blur the contours of hard, often unpleasant facts. This aversion to reality is its main appeal. Once you acquire the vocabulary, it’s actually easier to say people with limited financial resources than the poor.
This misses the point of equity language. The goal of equity language is to avoid using language that feeds people’s preconceptions and biases. Like prisoners are a subset of people who are experiencing the criminal-justice system, but the idea is that there is far more to the experience than just being in prison.
Not to mention most people have preconceived notions about who is in prison that are based on racism and other biases.
The article seems to miss the point of the language attempting to be inclusive while also assuming the intent to to be vague.
I think a lot of equity based language ends up being unclear, but once the intent is understood the goal is a positive one. Heck, person first is a great approach because people do tend to treat people as their disability or race instead of as people.
I don’t really care if the intent is good if the effect is to make people use language that’s wordy, clumsy, or vague, or to shame people for using perfectly ordinary vocabulary. I don’t believe it actually helps anyone, and it reeks of the kind of logic that says “we must do something, and this is something, so we must do this.”
“Understanding nuance is hard!”
What nuance? All I see is a bunch of obnoxious demands not backed up by any evidence that they help anyone.
